The silver doe
”Harry, it’s all right, you’re all right!”
”No…” he moans feverishly.
He’s moving with Voldemort’s feline grace to pick up… the picture, the picture of the thief… Voldemort’s skinny, white fingers close around the broken frame, like a skeletal hand, indifferent to the sharp edges of the shattered glass that graze the bloodless skin… Rage snuffed out again as quickly as it had flared up, replaced by surprise and joy… He’d found him, he’d found the thief!…
”No… I dropped it… I dropped it…”
”Harry! It’s okay! Wake up, Harry, wake up —!”
He’s Harry… He’s Harry, not Voldemort… His hands are empty, curled into tight fists along his sides… He’s lying down, drenched in cold, sticky sweat…
”Harry…” Hermione whispers and he opens his eyes finally. ”Do you feel all — all right?”
”Yes”, he lies, and starts sitting up, throwing a furtive glance around the tent, reassuring himself that they are, miraculouly safe.
”I had to use a Hover Charm to get you into your bunk, I couldn’t lift you”, Hermione says, she’s wringing her hands again, Harry notices. ”You’ve been… Well, you haven’t been quite… You’ve been ill. Quite ill.”
”How long ago did we leave?”
”Hours ago. It’s nearly morning.”
”And I’ve been… What, unconscious?”
”Not exactly”, Hermione says uncomfortably. ”You’ve been shouting and moaning and… things… I couldn’t get the Horcrux off you, it was stuck to your chest. You’ve got a mark, I’m sorry, I had to use a Severing Charm to get it away… The snake bit you too, but I’ve cleaned the wound and put some dittany on it…”
Harry pulls the sweaty t-shirt off and looks down at his chest. There’s a scarlet oval branded into his skin, just above his heart. Glancing at his forearm, he can also make out the half-healed puncture wounds from the snake’s bite and shivers at the memory.
He lies back against the pillows and looks into Hermione’s face, drawn with tension and nearly grey. He tells her what happened in the bedroom before she showed up, that it hadn’t been Bathilda Bagshot at all, but the snake all along. That as soon as she got him on her own, she started talking and he hadn’t realised they’d been speaking in Parseltongue, but that’s obviously why she wanted Hermione to stay downstairs.
Hermione’s eyes widen almost comically when he tells her how the old woman had suddenly transformed into the giant snake and attacked him.
”The snake was inside her?” she says horrified.
Harry nods, and tells her she’d summoned You-Know-Who and he’d told her to hold Harry until he could get there, that he’d heard his voice inside his head and felt his joy as he flew towards Godric’s Hollow.
”And after we jumped out the window, it was like I was him again — running into the house, into the bedroom, I was standing at the window and I saw us Disapparate… Then he — I — was remembering that night, all of it…”
He trails off. The memories of that Halloween night, Voldemort’s memories of killing Lily and James, and trying to kill Harry himself, still fresh in his mind and his stomach turns. He sits up quickly and gets out of bed.
”Harry, no, I’m sure you ought to rest!”
”You’re the one who needs rest”, he contradicts her with a decisive shake of the head, pulling a dry t-shirt over his head. ”I’m fine. I’ll keep watch for a while. Where’s my wand?”
He pulls a sweater on as well and thus misses the stricken look on Hermione’s face, but when she doesn’t answer him his shackles go up anyway.
”Hermione?”
The girl nibbles her lower lip nervously, and her eyes regain their suspscious sheen of before. Harry’s stomach drops.
”Where is my wand?” he repeats.
Hermione still refuses to speak, but she reaches down and picks up something from the floor next to bunk and holds it out to him. At first he doesn’t get why she’s showing him a couple of sticks, but then he sees the unmistakable red phoenix feather sticking out of one of them and realises what those sticks actually are.
Harry takes his splintered wand in his hands gingerly as though accepting a living, wounded thing. He stares in horror at the phoenix feather and the splintered wood. Then holds it out to Hermione again with desperate hope.
”Mend it. Please.”
”Harry, I don’t think — when it’s broken like this — I mean remember Ron's wand in Second Year —?”
”Please, Hermione, try!”
”R- Reparo”, Hermione says, waving her own wand over Harry’s and it immediately reseals itself.
Harry’s heart leaps with relief and hope, but it is quickly squashed when he casts a Lumos Spell and the wand-tip merely sparks feebly before going out again. Pointing the wand at Hermoine he says firmly ”Expelliarmus!”
Hermione’s wand gives a weak twitch in her hand, but nothing else happens to it. Harry’s wand on the other hand promptly splits in two again.
”Oh Harry”, Hermione whispers. ”I’m so, so sorry… As we were leaving, that snake was coming at us, I cast a Blasting Curse at it, and it rebounded everywhere, it must have — must have hit —”
”It was an accident”, Harry says firmly, with a confidence he doesn’t he feel, concentrating really hard on not blaming her, at least not openly. ”I’ll just borrow yours for now. While I keep watch.”
Hermione leaves him alone for most part of the day and doesn’t approach him until way into the afternoon, when the sun has started to set behind the trees. She’s carrying two steaming teacups in her hands and offers him one timidly as she crouches down in front of him. He thanks her shortly and busies himself with blowing steam from his cup so he doesn’t have to look at her remorseful face for too long.
Revealing a book that she’d carried under one of her arms, Hermione offers that to Harry as well and he immediately recognises the cover. It’s Rita Skeeter’s unathorised biography on Dumbledore. Harry flips the pages until he finds the picture of the teenage Dumbledore and the thief and scans the caption quickly, then does a double-take and reads it again more slowly, sure he must have read it wrong the first time.
”Albus Dumbledore, shortly after his mother’s death, with his friend Gellert Grindelwald”, the caption reads.
”Grindelwald?” Harry says incredulously.
Hermione nibbles her lower lip silently, then nods for him to continue reading the chapter entitled ”The Greater Good”
When Harry’s finished the chapter, he feels like the lining of his stomach has turned to ice and takes a large gulp of tea in the hopes of warming himself up again, but the tea is cold by now and only makes him feel worse.
”I know”, Hermione murmurs sadly. ”It doesn’t make for very nice reading, but…”
”Yeah, you could say that”, Harry scoffs, trying not to sound like someone has just ripped his heart out and stomped on it a couple of times.
”But don’t forget Harry, this is Rita Skeeter writing.”
Harry just shakes his head. Unless Rita Skeeter had re-written Dumbledore’s own letter to Grindelwals with her Quick-Quote Quill, they can hardly blame her for the ideas that Dumbledore seemed to have had as a teenager.
”It’s an awful thought that Dumbledore’s ideas might have helped Grindelwald rise to power, but on the other hand, even Rita can’t pretend that they knew each other for more than a few months one summer when they were both really yooung, and —”
”I thought you’d say that”, Harry interrupts her. ”I thought you’d say ’they were young’ but they were the same age as we are now. And here we are, risking our lives to fight the Dark Arts, and there he was, in a huddle with his new best friend, plotting the rise to power over the muggles!”
Harry jumps to his feet and starts pacing, to let some of his frustration out before his temper gets the better of him. He doesn’t want to take his anger out on Hermione, but the more he thinks about Dumbledore, and the Horcruxes, and this suicidal quest to find and destroy them with nothing to go on, not to mention Snape, always Snape, the angrier he gets…
”I’m not trying to defend what Dumbledore wrote”, Hermione says. ”All that ’right to rule’ rubbish, it’s ’Magic is might’ all over again, but Harry, his mother had just died, he was stuck alone in that house —”
”He wasn’t alone!” Harry snaps. ”He had his brother and sister for company, his Squib sister he was keeping locked up —!”
”I don’t believe that”, Hermione says firmly. ”Whatever was wrong with that girl, I don’t believe she was a Squib. The Dumbledore we knew would never, ever have allowed —”
”The Dumbledore we thought we knew didn’t want to conquer muggles by force!” Harry bellows, the sudden noise of it scaring a few blackbirds from a nearby tree and sending them flying up against the evening sky.
”Harry, I’m sorry, but I think the real reason you’re so angry is that Dumbledore never told you any of this himself… But he loved you, Harry. I know he loved you.”
”I don’t know who he loved, Hermione. Maybe this Gellert Grindelwald bloke. But never me. This isn’t love, the mess he’s left me in. He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with Grindelwald than he ever shared with me…”
As if this admission has punctured the air out of him, Harry sinks back to the forest floor and picks up Hermoine’s wand again.
”Thanks for the tea. I’ll finish the watch. You go back inside.”
*
It’s snowing by the time Hermione takes over the watch at midnight. Harry curls up under two blankets in his bunk and falls into a fitfull sleep.
Waking up in a cold-sweat every other minute, and quelling down the disappointment at the distinct absence of dark, glittering eyes and thin, soft lips in the fragments of dreams that he can remember.
Finally, when he startles awake after a particularly disturbing dream in which Nagini had burst through a wreath of Christmas roses and lunged at him, Harry decides that keeping watch would be more restful than actually trying to get some rest and walks over to Hermoine. She’s sitting huddled in the tent entrance, reading A history of Magic by the light of her wand.
Harry suggests moving on in the morning and she readily agrees, blinking fat snowflakes out of her eyelids.
”We’ll go somewhere more sheltered. I kept thinking I could hear someone moving around the site, I even thought I saw somebody… I’m sure I imagined it! The snow in the dark, it plays tricks on your eyes… But perhaps we ought to Disapparate under the Cloak, just in case?”
After they’ve packed up everything, Harry puts the Horcrux around his neck and grabs Hermione’s hand. The usual tightness of Apparation swallows them up, then spits them out again in another wooded area with less snow but just as chilly.
”Where are we?” Harry asks mildly curious, as Hermione opens the beaded handbag and starts rummaging around its contens, finally pulling out tent poles.
”Forest of Dean”, she says, speaking into the bag. ”I came camping here once, with my mum and dad.”
After two nights of nearly no sleep, Harry’s nerves are frazzled and his senses on high alert. But he refuses to let Hermione take the night watch. Harry knows he won’t be able to sleep much anyway and what’s the point of them both losing a good night’s sleep after all?
He places a cushion in the tent mouth and sits down, wearing all the sweaters he owns and still shivering slightly when a light breeze hits him. He jerks upright and listens tensely, sure he’d heard a noise. Probably just a small animal scurrying around, he tells himself after a moment… He recalls Voldemort’s memory of that Halloween night, the sounds of his cloak slithering over dead leaves as he made his way through the village of Godric’s Hollow… Harry shakes his head, having just imagined hearing the noise again, somewhere in the forest, but it was just his imagination. It must have been.
All the same, he peers out into the darkness. But it makes no difference. On a cloudy night like this, with no hint of moonlight, it’s impossible to distinguish anything in the dark. It’s like he’s been stuck somehow in-between Apparition points, in some horrible limbo of nothingness.
Curiously, he holds out his left hand in front of his face to see if he’ll be able to make it out.
That’s when it happens; a bright silver light suddenly appears amongst the naked trees just up ahead of him, moving closer and closer to him, but soundlessly. Whatever the source of the light, it doesn’t disturb the blanket of dry leaves on the ground as it moved, but seems to simply drift closer.
Harry immediately jumps to his feet, holding out Hermione’s wand in front of him. As the thing gets nearer, the light becomes almost blinding and Harry screws his eyes up for a moment, still holding out his wand arm shakily.
Blinking in the pure white light, until his eyes have become accustomed to it, Harry stares in wonder as the silvery creature steps out from behind the nearest oak tree and stands merely feet away from him, gazing silently at him through long-lashed eyes that seems to reach into Harry’s very soul. It’s a silver-white doe. And as Harry meets her eyes, he feels a soothing sensation seep into his body, the feeling of being safe, of being home… and although Harry has no idea where this silver doe came from, and has never seen it before in his life, he somehow feels as though he’s been waiting for her to come to him, only he’d forgotten until this moment that they’d ever arranged to meet.
Harry holds his breath, waiting for something else to happen, with only a subtle inkling of what tickling him in the back of his mind, so subtle and out-of-reach that he barely notices.
Then the doe turns and starts to walk away again, and Harry is gripped with panic.
”No!” he blurts out, his voice cracking with lack of use. ”Come back!”
But the doe takes no notice of his plea, just continues to trot silently and deliberately through the trees, slowly disappearing from Harry again.
He hesitates for a second, his voice of reason — sounding very much like Mad-Eye Moody in times like these — reminding him that this could be a trap, a trick to lure him away from the tent and Hermoine.
But then his intuition — taking on the voice of Remus Lupin for some reason — interrupts and says that whatever that thing was, and whoever sent it, if indeed it was sent to him, it wasn’t the result of Dark Magic.
Harry starts running after it, wand still held aloft, just in case. He zig-zags between the trees, only tripping over one root and one rock, which is a remarkable feat in near pitch blackness, especially considering Harry has managed to trip over both his own feet and completely empty spaces on more than one occasion in the past.
Deeper and deeper into the forest the doe leads him and Harry walks quickly, almost jogging to catch up with her, sure that once he does she’ll allow him to approach her properly and then she’ll speak and she’ll tell him exactly what he needs to know…
Finally, the doe comes to a halt and turns to gaze at him once more. Feeling a jolt of excitement, Harry breaks into a run, but before he reaches her, the doe vanishes suddenly. Harry stumbles to a stop, blinking in disorientation, the sudden darkness shocking him, and as he screws his eyes shut once more he can still see the imprint of the doe’s light behind his eyelids.
Fear grips his heart then. The doe’s presence had meant he was safe, but now that she was gone…
”Lumos”, he whispers urgently.
A muffled crackle of twigs being trod on rings out in the deafening silence and Harry whirls around in panic, listening intently, trying to make any shapes out in the darkness beyond the sphere of his wand light. Had it been a trap after all? Had the doe led him to an ambush, was he about to be attacked?
Choking on his own breath, his heart galloping up into his throat, he holds the wand higher. Was he imagining, or was somebody standing there watching him?
Another noise, from behind him, and he whirls back around, ”Lumos maxima!”
But no, nothing. Just more trees, and a small, frozen pool. Its cracked black surface glittering as Harry took a few steps closer to it, wand held high.
But what was that? Something in the pool seemed to glint as the wandlight hit it. Harry held his breath and took another few steps closer… His own distorted reflection stared back at him fromt he uneven surface of the ice. But there was something else too. Beneath the ice, on the bottom of the pool… A great silver cross… No, not a cross — the Sword of Gryffindor!
Harry kneels down at the edge of the pool and stares down at the Sword in mute shock. How is this possible? he thinks excitedly. How can the Sword of Gryffindor be lying in a forest pool so close to where he and Hermione were camping? Hardly a coincidence, Harry thinks. But if some unknown magic had pulled Hermione to this place, or if the Sword had been placed in the pool after they’d arrived, he’s not sure.
And if it had been placed there for Harry to find, and the doe — which Harry assumes must have been a Patronus — was sent to guide Harry to it, who was behind it? and where are they now?
Harry turns around and scans his surroundings once more, searching for a human outline or the glint of an eye, but the clearing is empty. Turning back to the pool, Harry allows some of his apprehension to make way for exhiliration; he’s found the Sword!
”Accio sword”, he says, but stays firmly on the bottom of the pool and give no sign of a magical tug.
He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. If it was, whomever intended Harry should find the Sword would just have had to put it on the ground, not stick it on the bottom of a frozen pool after all. He thinks back to Second Year and what he’d done to summon th Sword then. He’d been in danger and asked for help then.
Glancing at the Sword again, unsure, Harry mutters ”Help?”
Nothing happens.
Thinking again, Harry tries to recall what Dumbledore had told him in his office after the incident in the Chamber of Secrets. Only a true Gryffindor could have pulled that sword out of the hat.
Okay, Harry thinks. I can work with that. So what are the qualities that define a Gryffindor? What was it the Sorting Hat always said?
Their daring, nerve and chivalry set Gryffindor apart.
Harry lets out a sigh, knowing what he’ll have to do. If he’s completely honest with himself, a small part of him had suspected this the second he saw the Sword.
Taking a steeling breath, he starts pulling all the sweaters off, shivering violently as the cold night air hits his naked skin. Then toeing off his boots and pulling off his socks, he finally unbuckles his belt with shaking fingers and steps out of his jeans. Finally placing the pouch containing his broken wand, the shard of Sirius’ mirror, his mother’s letter that he’d found in Grimmauld Place and the Golden Snitch Dumbledore left him in his will on top of the small pile of clothes, he walks up to the very edge of the pond, already shivering violently in just his underwear.
”Diffindo”, he says, pointing Hermione’s wand at the middle of the pond and the ice immediately cracks.
It’s not terribly deep, but to get to the Sword he will have to submerge himself completely in the water. He puts Hermione’s wand down carefully on the side, making sure that the lit tip was pointing towards the hole in the ice and then, before he has time to psych himself out, he dives in.
If the night air had been a shock to his body, it was nothing compared to this. As soon as the black water envelops him, it’s as if the very air in his lunges freeze solid and every one of his pores scream with pain. The cold pushes on his skull and squeezes his brain as if he’s just Disapparated, except this pressure is even worse than that, the pain of it fierce like the Cruciatus Curse.
Harry tries to keep his eyes open to look for the Sword, but it hurts too much. He gropes blindly for it instead, soon bumping the hilt of it with his numb fingers and concentrating all of his remaining strength and presence of mind on grasping the hilt… Then something closes around his neck, pulling him backwards, choking him; he raises his empty hand to free himself of whatever’s coiled around his neck, only to discover the chain of the locket pulled taut against his skin… he claws at the chain, trying to get a finger in between the chain and his own neck, but it’s impossible, the chain tightens further…
Harry drops the Sword and starts pulling on the chain with both hands, kicking desperately and trying to get back to the surface, but only succeeds in propelling himself further into the depth of the pool, the Horcrux pulling him further under the ice, away from the hole… He thrashes wildly, air bubbles erupting from his mouth as he tries to scream… He feels his limbs grow heavier and heavier, his fingers and toes numbing completely… So this is it, he thinks faintly, this is how I am to die… trust Trelawney to get it wrong…
A pressure closes around his torso, like that of an arm hugging him tightly. Surely Death come to take him… Then darkness overtakes him completely.
*
He comes to slowly, sluggishly… Someone is hovering above him, but he can’t tell who. The early light of dawn has filtered into the forest clearing, but without his glasses it’s still no use, all he can make out is a blurry silhouette and dark hair… Hermione? But no, her hair is bigger, frizzier…
Thin lips press against his firmly, urgently… Why are they kissing me?… Then hot air is pushing into his mouth and throat, and it should feel like an invasion, but it actually warms him up a little, like a shot of fire whiskey travelling into his body… A violent cough seizes him unexpectedly and before he knows it he’s heaving cold water all over himself and spluttering miserably.
The figure leans back enough so that he can curl up on his side and continue to cough. He’s vaguely aware of a warm hand on his back, pounding him several times, then caressing him roughly, too roughly… Oh, to warm me, Harry realises after a second. He’s shivering violently, like he’s having a fit.
The figure moves away, and Harry is gripped by a panic similar to what he felt when the silver doe vanished and tries to sit up, but his limbs won’t cooperate with him and he ends up twitching uselessly on the ground instead.
”Calm yourself!” a deep voice says roughly, and Harry almost chokes on his own ragged breath.
No… It can’t be…
Then hands are on him, manhandling him, pulling his arms and neck and… Oh, Harry thinks dumbly as the first sweater is pushed in place over his still damp body. The figure goes through the same routine with his other five sweaters and by the last one, Harry has actually managed to get enough blood into his arms so that he can assist the proceedings somewhat.
Once the sixth sweater is on him, his jeans are pulled just as roughly over his legs and then something warm and soft, like a blanket, is wrapped around his entire body, before his glasses are unceremoniously thrust onto his face. But blinking slowly, Harry realises the glasses have done nothing to improve his sight. In fact, the figure in front of him seems even blurrier than before.
There is the unmistakable rustle of someone moving swiftly, and with an annoyed sigh Harry’s glasses are removed once more. After a couple of seconds, during which Harry can only hear the muffled noise of someone grumbling under their breath, the glasses are pushed onto his face again and nearly taking one of his eyes out.
”H-Hey —!” Harry protests weakly through his chattering teeth.
Severus Snape is scowling back at him, and Harry can see him clear as anything. He shakes his head minutely, it can’t be… He must be unconscious still and dreaming.
”You — foolish — stupid boy!” the man sitting in front of him hisses and Harry startles at the sudden noise of it.
”Do you mind telling me what the Hell you were thinking?” Snape continues in a dangerously low voice trembling with the effort of keeping calm. ”Why didn’t you take this off before you went into the pond?”
Harry stares numbly at the locket dangling from Snape’s hand. A small part of him is desperate to grab it, to take it back, convinced that Snape has come to steal it back… He makes a feeble attempt at reaching out, but finds both his arms obstructed by the blanket… He looks down. Not a blanket. Snape’s cloak.
”Well?”
Harry looks up again swiftly. He tries telling himself he’s dreaming, but he’s finding it harder and harder to believe as warmth starts coming back into his limbs and his mind starts to clear. He swallows thickly. All the questions he’s wanted to ask the man, all the things he’s wanted to say… But he can’t even get his mouth to work.
Snape’s eyes seem to be reaching into him, but Harry doesn’t bother to put any shields up. He doesn’t have the strength. And frankly, he wants Snape to know. All of it.
”Are you all right?” the man asks after a moment’s heavy silence.
Harry nods.
”I…” Snape seems to hesitate for a second, his eyes flickering over Harry’s face uncertainly before flitting away completely. ”I don’t have long. I didn’t expect to… I was just going to make sure you found the Sword. I need to get back to Hogwarts before breakfast, or they’ll notice my absence from the castle.”
The doe, Harry thinks. Was that Snape’s Patronus?
”But I suppose I’ll have to destroy this thing before I go”, he grumbles in an undertone and gives the locket a look of digust.
Harry gives him a startled look.
”It’s a Horcrux, yes?” Snape snaps. ”Well, since you completely bungled up my plan to assure the Sword would present itself to you by acting as your usual reckless self and nearly getting yourself killed, again, and thus forcing me to risk my own life in order to save yours, again… it looks as though the Sword belongs to me… again…”
Snape sneers, then takes a deep breath and peers critically at the locket.
”I —” Harry croaks out, before his voice breaks and he coughs.
Snape merely glances over at him, then goes back to study the locket.
”Pah — Parss —” Harry coughs, then tries again. ”Parseltongue…”
”Mmm”, Snape hums in agreement. ”Most likely… Are you able to speak it?”
Harry clears his throat thoroughly, then nods.
”All right”, Snape says warily, and places the locket on a nearby rock. ”You open it, and I’ll destroy it…”
”Wait…” Harry says weakly and pushes himself up to sitting, making sure the cloak stays wrapped around him. ”Before…”
”I told you, I don’t have a lot of time, Potter”, Snape says. ”What is it?”
”You kissed me…”
Snape flinches, then glares back at Harry as though he’d just gravely insulted him.
”I did not kiss you!” he says vehemently. ”I gave you mouth to mouth! I saved your life, you ungrateful little —!”
Harry frowns in confusion, then quickly shakes his head. ”Not now, before —!”
”Enough!” Snape barks. ”I don’t have time for this! If the Carrows notice I’m gone — Never mind — I just don’t have time for your stupid questions, Potter —”
”—Harry—”
”—Do you want my help or not?”
”I don’t need your help!” Harry says indignantly. ”I can do it myself, just give it here —”
”What, the Sword?” Snape sneers. ”Unfortunately not, unless you feel ready for another swim?”
Harry deflates at that, glancing over at the pool, another violent shiver passes through him at the thought of going back into that water again. He peers over at Snape again, catching the man’s subtle eyeroll.
”Just tell the damn thing to open”, Snape grumbles.
”All right, on three… one… two… three… Open.”
The golden door of the locket swings open with a click, and inside blinks a set of living eyes, dark and handsome like the eyes of Tom Riddle before they became red and slit-pupilled.
Snape raises the Sword of Gryffindor high in the air, aiming the point at one of the frantically swivelling eyes, when suddenly both eyes fixed on him and a hissing voice rises from the locket.
”I have seen your heart, and it is mine.”
”Don’t listen to it, stab it!” Harry says anxiously, as Snape seems to hesitate.
”I have seen your dreams, Severus Snape… and I have seen your fears. All you desire is possible, but all that you dread is also possible…”
”Stab it!” Harry shouts, his voice echoing between the trees as Snape continues to meet the Horcrux gaze as if transfixed.
”Least loved, always… by the muggle father who wanted a normal child, by the mother whose life became a living Hell from the minute you were born and continued to be a Hell until the day she died… Your only childhood friend chose your enemy over you in the end… Your only friend in adulthood—”
Snape snarls, and re-adjusting his hold on the hilt of the Sword he makes to stab it finally.
Riddle’s eyes burn scarlet for a second and then two dark shapes erupted from the locket’s windows, from the eyes, like ominous bubbles that contorted and swirled until they formed a grotesque copy of Harry and another boy, faceless at first, locked in a heated embrace… Snape stumbles back in alarm, almost losing his grip on the Sword, but quickly regains his composure again.
Harry stares at the locket’s display with mix of embarassment and fury, his cheeks burning as the copy of himself breaks the kiss and gives Snape a lewd, sneering smile, his emerald eyes glinting with malice… The other boy turns to look at Snape as well, and now the face has started to gain some features… decidedly pinched features, Harry notices aghast, and as the hair steadily turns white blonde, both boys sneer at Snape…
”You didn’t really think I ever had feelings for you, did you?” Riddle’s mock-up of Harry spoke in Riddle’s hissing voice. ”I mean just look at you…”
Riddle-Harry lets out a mocking tinkle of laughter close to a giggle and a mean scowl on his face contorts his features further until he looks mean and ugly, as though making an impression of Snape. Riddle-Draco throws his head back and laughs humorlessly. It’s the ugliest sound Harry has ever heard.
”Who could ever love you? You’re ugly, and nasty, and old… What do you imagine you have to offer someone like me? Or anyone for that matter? You’re useless, Severus… You are a coward, and a traitor, and a murderer…”
Harry looks over at Snape in desperation. The older man’s face is screwed up in anguish, just like that night…
”The thought of you, and your mangled-up, disgusting body makes me sick. In fact, I think I would have preferred to drown than having you anywhere near me… I may have confessed to an innocent schoolboy crush on you, but if I ever had any such feelings for you, it’s only because you manipulated me into feeling them… you used me, in my weak and vulnerable state, Severus, you took advantage of me… you are a dirty old man…”
”Don’t listen to it —!” Harry begs. ”Just stab it! Please, just stab it!”
”I hate you”, Riddle-Harry says, smiling maliciously as Riddle-Draco jeers. ”I really hate you…”
With a broken sob of a scream, Snape plunges the Sword down, the blade flashing brilliantly in the glow from the sunrise, and Harry curls up with his arm over his head in protection… there is a clang of metal, then a blood-curdling, high-pitched scream…
Harry looks up, his heart hammering wildly in his chest… The monstrous versions of himself and Draco Malfoy have vanished, as have the eyes of Tom Riddle from the shattered remains of the locket. Snape lets his arm fall to his side, the Sword scraping the ground. He’s panting as if he’s just run a marathon, and he’s avoiding looking over at Harry.
”What the bloody Hell —!”
Harry whirls around, still sitting on the ground, legs tangled up in Snape’s cloak. His heart leaps in his chest.
”Ron!” Harry exclaims.
The redhaired boy stands frozen on the spot, staring between Harry and Snape, his fingers twitching round the wand clutched in his raised hand. Harry follows his gaze to where Snape is collecting himself once more, still refusing to look at Harry. He walks back to the pond he unceremoniously drops the Sword into the hole in the ice again.
”Hey —!” Ron protests and recieves a sour look in response.
Snape glances over at the cloak, wrapped securely around Harry’s body, careful to avoid looking directly at Harry’s face still. Harry feels his face heat up. He should really give the cloak back, he thinks… but for some reason he feels really reluctant to give it up. It’s so warm, and it smells like — never mind, he tells himself. But it’s warm, and Harry might get hypothermia… He glances over at Snape again. The man did jump in and save him, and he is still drenched unlike Harry who is wearing dry clothes and has managed to warm up considerably by now… But he still doesn’t want to give the cloak back.
Snape seems to come to the same conclusion and instead of putting up a fight he apparently decides to sacrifice his cloak, because without another word or even a glance at Harry he turns on the spot and Disapparates.